Chemical structure rendering software is widely used by research and educational institutions to depict chemical structures and chemical reactions of interest. Unlike chemical formulas or chemical names, structural formulas provide a graphical representation of the molecular structure. A graphical chemical structure representation is capable of indicating the arrangements of atoms in a way that a chemical formula cannot.
Current methods for drawing and editing chemical structures on a computer utilize mouse-driven or touch pad commands that include pointing and clicking on displayed menu items in a graphical user interface. Existing chemical structure rendering ‘apps’ for tablet computers and other portable computing devices (e.g., portable phones) utilize the same menu-driven paradigm. In general, these approaches are manually intensive and non-intuitive.
There is a need for more efficient and intuitive user interfaces for drawing and editing chemical structures on a touch screen or touch pad of an electronic device. A particular need exists for electronic systems and devices that receive intuitive gesture input from a user's fingers on a touch screen or touch pad and utilize the input to create and edit chemical structure representations.